Last updated: August 2026
The Price County Sheriff’s Office processed 220 open records requests in the first seven and a half months of 2026. That is already more than two-thirds of last year’s total, and the year is not over.
At that pace, 2026 is on track to finish near 350 requests, roughly 75% above the 195 the office handled in 2024. That follows a 65% jump in 2025 alone, when requests climbed from 195 to 322. The requests are not just more numerous. They are bigger. One single request this year required a staff member to watch more than 21 hours of video and redact it before release.
The county is starting to ask what that volume costs and whether it can keep absorbing it.
220 Requests, 117 Hours, One Staffer
Sheriff’s office staff track the time spent on records requests. Through mid-August 2026, that total had reached almost 7,000 minutes, roughly 117 hours, spent on redaction and fulfillment alone.
| Year | Total records requests |
|---|---|
| 2024 | 195 |
| 2025 | 322 |
| 2026 (YTD mid-Aug) | 220 |
The office does not have a dedicated records clerk. The work falls to Annie Meyer, the sheriff’s executive administrative assistant, on top of her other duties. District Attorney Alexis Nash, who flagged the influx at the Law Enforcement Committee on August 13, said Meyer’s job had become “completely inundated” with records work.
“Her job is completely inundated with fulfilling these open records requests,” Nash told the committee. “She’s absolutely inundated, and basically she’s working on it. She’ll get to it when she can.”
The 21-Hour Video Request
The single largest request this year is the clearest illustration of the load.
One request required Meyer to watch more than 21 hours of video footage and then go back through it to redact portions before the records could be released. That is roughly three full working days spent on one request, for one requester, before any pages are turned over.
Records requests are statutory. Wisconsin’s open records law gives the public the right to inspect and copy government records, and the county is obligated to fulfill them. The law does not, however, say the county must turn them around overnight.
“We remind the public that we are fulfilling these in the statutory requirement,” a county official told the committee. “It doesn’t say we have to do it yesterday.”
Not Just the Sheriff’s Office
The Sheriff’s Office is the largest target, but it is not the only one. County officials told the committee that departments across the county are seeing more requests.
Two patterns concern them. The first is broad, unfocused asks. Officials described requests seeking “everything you use in your server room,” which the county has been denying on cybersecurity grounds. If a requester learns every brand and model of the county’s equipment, the reasoning goes, they gain a map of potential attack surfaces.
The second is a shift in tone. The county used to field more people stopping in to ask questions about a record. Now, officials said, they see more “gotcha” requests aimed at catching the county rather than understanding it.
Some requests never result in payment. The county noted that some requesters abandon the request once they learn it carries a fee, which the law permits counties to charge for the “actual, necessary, and reasonable cost” of reproduction.
Is Price County Alone? Not Anymore
Price County is not alone.
Counties across Wisconsin are seeing records volume grow, and some have responded by creating a dedicated position. Ashland County has one, an open-records assistant. The cost is not trivial: county officials cited roughly $80,000 to $100,000 per year with benefits and retirement for such a role.
For a county already watching its levy limits closely, that is real money. The alternative (leaving records work on top of existing staff) means slower responses and a growing backlog.
The county also flagged a cybersecurity caution it says the state has raised: a county that released a broad set of email addresses was subsequently hit by a cyberattack that used those addresses. The county is treating some broad requests with caution as a result.
It Started With the Data Brokers
This is not the first time Price County’s records operation has drawn scrutiny.
Earlier this year, we reported that 18% of the Sheriff’s Office records requests came from commercial data brokers. LexisNexis alone filed 136 requests between 2020 and 2024, often paying less than it cost the county to produce the records. That reporting showed the county was effectively subsidizing a data-harvesting operation.
The current influx is different. The growth now is in raw volume across all types of requesters, not just data brokers. The 2024-to-2026 jump is more than double the LexisNexis share of the workload. This is a volume problem, not a single-company problem.
Price County has also documented how towns across the county have ignored records requests entirely, a separate failure this office has tracked. The Sheriff’s Office, by contrast, is fulfilling its requests, but at a cost that is becoming hard to ignore.
What the County Is Doing
The county says it is exploring ways to manage the requests more efficiently. No decision was announced at the August 13 committee meeting or the August 18 County Board meeting.
The realistic options are the ones on the table for most Wisconsin counties:
- Keep the workload on existing staff. No new cost, but slower responses and a growing backlog.
- Charge more aggressively. The law allows counties to recover actual costs. Price County’s current pricing may not cover the full cost of staff time.
- Create a dedicated records position. Roughly $80,000–$100,000 a year, the Ashland model, funded from the levy.
None of these is free. The question for Price County is whether the cost of open records stays hidden inside staff workloads or becomes a line item the board votes on.
Who Pays for Open Records?
Wisconsin’s open records law works because someone does the work. In Price County, that someone is currently one administrative assistant in the Sheriff’s Office, and the requests are arriving faster than she can clear them.
The public has a right to these records. The county has an obligation to provide them. The unresolved question is who pays for the time, and whether Price County follows Ashland’s lead and funds the job properly or lets the backlog keep growing.
If you have submitted a records request to a Price County office and waited, we want to hear about it. The records are public. So is the process of getting them.
See also: our guide to free camping in Wisconsin
See also: our guide to Price County public records
See also: our guide to every town in Price County
Sources
- Price County Law Enforcement Committee meeting, August 13, 2026 (transcript)
- Price County Board of Supervisors meeting, August 18, 2026 (transcript)
- 18% of Price County Sheriff’s Records Requests Come From a Single Data Broker, May 25, 2026
- 13 Price County Towns Ignored Our Public Records Requests, June 16, 2026